NYT: Fewer Employers Totally Cover Health Premiums

[DeepModem Mom]

Fewer Employers Totally Cover Health Premiums
By MILT FREUDENHEIM
Published: March 23, 2005





As old-line American companies - the last bastions of fully paid employee benefits - struggle in global markets, fewer and fewer of them are able to shoulder 100 percent of workers' health insurance premiums.

"Employers simply can't afford the benefits they have promised," said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, an organization of large employers in Washington. "The auto companies are in the most trouble because they have some of the highest health costs and some of the toughest competition."

A scattering of companies in industries with strong unions like telecommunications, steel and autos, as well as a few state governments still pay the entire premium, but most employees are paying more each year as health costs soar.

The percentage of large and medium-size employers paying 100 percent of workers' individual premiums plummeted to 17 percent in 2004 from 29 percent in 2000, said Michael Carter, a vice president in Philadelphia with the Hay Group, a benefits consulting firm. Even fewer companies paid the full premium for family coverage - 6 percent of employers in 2004 compared with 11 percent in 2000.

At the same time, most workers who are required to share the premium costs are paying more each year....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/business/23health.html

[LynzM]

1. Honestly?

I'm surprised there are any that still do. I've never known anyone who didn't have to pay some part of the health coverage, if there was any available.

[ladjf]

2. Unless current trends that are and will deprive older and

unemployed citizens of basic support, we will hear numerous cases of suicide and even people dying of hunger in the streets. In short, we are becoming a 3rd world country.